favorable that an international bimetallic agreement, which the world
had been trying to accomplish for nearly twenty years, might soon be
secured on an acceptable basis. It has long been suspected that the
strongest discouragement of this hope, and probably the determining
factor in its failure, was the attitude of President Cleveland as
quietly caused to be understood abroad. Very recently this
well-grounded suspicion has been turned into certainty by the
distinguished English bimetallist, Mr. Moreton Frewen, who, in a
letter to the Washington _Post_, says:

But Mr. Cleveland made it known, through the subterranean
channels of diplomacy, that, far from giving any support to
silver, he was preparing to urge on Congress the repeal of the
silver-purchase clauses of the Sherman act. Mr. Cleveland's
intention became known in official circles in Calcutta. That this
was the case I learned at the time and at first hand. The
government of India believed that the cessation of all silver
purchases in America would still further reduce the exchange
value of the rupee, and therefore, in advance of the pending
anti-silver legislation anticipated from Washington, the Indian
mints were closed.

Mr. Cleveland may well be deified in the gold-standard cult, for
clearly he has been the arch-enemy of bimetallism.

One of the characteristics of the discussion now going on between the
advocates of gold monometallism and those of bimetallism is the
disingenuousness of the former. They will rarely consent to a clear
definition of the issue, but seek to evade it both by preempting the
use of moral labels and catchphrases which satisfy their partisans
without inquiry, and by stigmatizing their opponents with such vile
imputations and base epithets as seem to place them beyond the pale of
moral and intellectual tolerance. "Sound" and "honest" they write
above their creed. They pose as consecrated guardians of public honor
and private property. We are depicted as dishonest and imbecile,
repudiators of national and individual obligations, communists or
anarchists bearing the torch and axe. This specialty is Mr.
Cleveland's long suit. Little wonder that his school should place him
at its head. His preeminence in the field where self-admiration is a
supreme virtue and ribald abuse passes for irrefutable argument will
scarcely be denied by anybody who shall have read the following
character